Wearable eButton for Evaluation of Energy Balance with Environmental Context and

描述（由申请人提供）：用于评估环境背景和行为下能量平衡的可穿戴电子按钮超重和肥胖已经成为一种广泛传播的流行病，影响了美国60%以上的人口。最近的一项研究表明，肥胖给美国经济造成的直接和间接损失估计每年至少为2150亿美元。在与肥胖及相关疾病的斗争中，研究和临床界都需要一种准确的工具来测量人们在现实生活中的能量摄入和消耗。然而，目前使用最多的工具仍然是问卷调查，这是主观的，往往不准确。目前最先进的饮食和身体活动测量已经远远落后于现代技术所能提供的。该领域已经成熟，可以进行重大创新。在这个应用中，我们建议开发一种新的电子设备，它有可能在测量饮食和身体活动方面产生技术上的飞跃。这种类似纽扣的装置eButton将通过一对磁铁或一个别针自然佩戴在胸前。基于可穿戴计算机的使用，我们的设备设计将采用一种新的测量概念。eButton将包含一个低功耗、高性能的微处理器，运行一个简化版的LINUX操作系统。它将包含许多创新的设计，包括一个光学饮食检测器来监测饮食/饮酒/吸烟，两个微型摄像机，产生立体视觉来测量食物的分量，而不依赖于参考卡，一个基于耳朵的血氧计来测量心率和氧饱和度，以及一个外推公式，使用美国环境保护署（EPA）的数据库来测量室外环境。eButton将通过各种先进的微型传感器获取的多媒体数据存储在设备内的闪存中。它还将与智能手机无线连接，使研究人员能够远程实时监控eButton的运行状态。所有传感器和功能模块都将由软件单独控制，以允许研究人员根据他们的特殊需要在可用的系统资源中进行选择。尽管该设备具有广泛的功能，但eButton需要极低的用户应答负担。研究参与者只需要在晚上打开/关闭设备并给电池充电。在我们的研究期间，eButton和相关的算法/软件将在我们的实验室由一个经验丰富的电子/软件工程师团队设计和构建，该团队基于NIH GEI饮食和体育活动研究计划下开发的设备的早期版本。一旦eButton构建完成，我们将使用人类受试者进行彻底的验证过程，通过与双标签水法作为金标准进行比较，来评估其在饮食和身体活动评估中的准确性。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Wearable eButton for Evaluation of Energy Balance with Environmental Context and Behavior Overweight and obesity have become a wide spread epidemic affecting more than 60% of the population in the United States. A recent study indicates that the estimated direct and indirect costs of obesity to the U.S. economy are at least $215 billion annually. In the battle against obesity and related diseases, both the research and clinical communities require an accurate tool to measure people's energy intake and expenditure in real life. However, presently, the most utilized tool is still a questionnaire which is subjective and often inaccurate. The current state-of-the-art in diet and physical activity measurement has fallen far behind what the modern technology is able to provide. The field is mature for a substantial innovation. In this application, we propose the development of a new electronic device which has the potential to produce a technological quantum leap in the measurement of diet and physical activity. This button- like device, eButton, will be worn naturally on the chest using a pair of magnets or a pin. A new measurement concept based on the use of the wearable computer will be utilized in our device design. The eButton will contain a low-power, high-performance microprocessor running a simplified version of the LINUX operating system. It will contain numerous innovative designs, including an optical eating detector to monitor eating/drinking/smoking, two miniature cameras that produce a stereo vision to measure food portion size without depending on a reference card, an ear-based oximeter for measurement of heart rate and oxygen saturation, and an extrapolation formula to measure outdoor environment using the US environmental protection agency (EPA) database. eButton will store the multimedia data acquired by a variety of advanced miniature sensors in a flash memory within the device. It will also have a wireless link to a smart phone which will allow researchers to monitor the operating status of eButton remotely in real time. All sensors and function modules will be individually controlled by software to allow researchers to select among the available system resources for their particular needs. Despite the wide functionality of the device, eButton requires an extremely low user respondent burden. The research participant is required to do nothing more than turning on/off the device and recharging its battery at night. During our research, eButton and associated algorithms/software will be designed and constructed in our laboratory by an experienced team of electronic/software engineers based on an early version of the device developed under the NIH GEI diet and physical activity research program. Once eButton is constructed, we will implement a thorough validation process using human subjects to evaluate its accuracy in diet and physical activity assessment by comparing against the doubly-labeled water method as the gold standard.